dalai lama

I have a problem. I am a meat lover and a devotee of all things rich, creamy and sweet. Eggs are my favorite breakfast food. When I eat a Hostess Cupcake, I enjoy it immensely and without a trace of irony.

So what's the problem? Is there anything easier, gastronomically speaking, than to find a good cut of meat or low-cost dairy products or processed foods in the United States? Even consumers who balk at the worst and most cruel aspects of modern industrial farming can, with relative ease, find sources of  grass-fed beef (humanely raised and slaughtered), free-range eggs, milk and cheese from benign family farms if they're willing to spend a few dollars. The world should be my oyster. Pun intended.

The belief I’m about to argue — that eating meat is ethical — has been, for me, 25 years in the making. For much of this time, paradoxically, I was a vegetarian because I thought eating animals was morally reprehensible.

What a self-righteous twit I was.

At my in-laws’ traditional Thanksgiving dinner, I recited graphic details about industrially raised turkey. (Do you know what debeaking is?) At the counter in a fast-food restaurant, I’d loudly order a cheeseburger with no meat. (I want a bun, cheese, pickles, lettuce and onions…but no meat!) At a neighborhood pig roast, I asked the host if he had ever read Charlotte’s Web. (You would never be able to eat pork if you had.)